138 WHEAT AND WOMAN 



the prairie it is so easy to understand why humanity's 

 idea of eternal rest and sweetness points to the 

 heavens as its best expression. 



I put Nancy at the timber bars which did duty 

 for a gate at the Mazeys', and she tucked her legs 

 under her and rose in the air at the merest suggestion 

 of a leap, so that I repeated the experiment at my 

 neighbour's stouter bars, forgetting that my saddle 

 was attached with one not perfectly sound British 

 girth that had been through a Canadian winter. 

 We cleared the timber, but the girth snapped, and 

 the saddle went one way and I the other. Nancy, 

 snifhng supper-time, promptly deserted, and went 

 gaily home alone. 



When my brother returned from his consultation 

 with the architect, the plans for the stopping-house 

 were frankly discussed. It was simplicity itself in 

 design, and was to consist of one big living-room 

 downstairs, its fellow bedchamber overhead, and a 

 lean-to kitchen ; but everything in the way of 

 building is costly on the prairie. The old-timer put 

 up his log-and-plaster shack himself ; the new- 

 comer usually has to buy lumber, which is extra- 

 ordinarily dear, and hire labour, which is ruinous. 

 We agreed that it would take all the fifty pounds that 

 was coming through from England even to give it any 

 sort of start ; but the outlook seemed most promising 

 since he said the solitary Touchwood trail was already 

 alive with trailers on their way to Kutawa, the 

 nearest point of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway 

 which was in process of construction betw^een Winni- 

 peg and Edmonton. He had already encountered 

 the leader of the supply section of the outfit, who 

 had promised to make the new stopping-house their 



